Boob Job Tourism ad banned in the UK

Boob Job Tourism

Photo by Enzo Cositori

In Travel news, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has banned a poster promoting breast enlargement surgery trips to Malaysia. They ruled that the Medical Tourism Association went a bit too far in promoting the procedure by displaying the posters in ladies’ rooms on motorways and in shopping centers. The Authority doesn’t want the serious surgical intervention to be depicted as a risk-free holiday lark….basking in the sun, booze, boob job…?

Funny though this may seem, it does emphasize the fact that Medical Tourism is becoming a big niche for both travel companies and medical entrepreneurs. Indeed, the New York Times this week reported that medical tourism companies are already working with clinics in Cuba to offer economical surgeries and other medical treatments as soon as travel rules are liberalized.


Speed up your site’s loading time: optimizing images

The Internet is flooded with a stream of competing small businesses fervently marketing their messages, so how can your site stand out?

One way is to ensure that your all-important photos, screenshots and other images are optimized to load quickly while engaging the viewer’s interest. Slow-loading pages will not only prompt users to bail from your site, they can also affect your search ranking.

Elegant Themes has some good ideas on how to optimize your images, both before and after they’re uploaded to your WordPress site. Judicious use of graphics tools such as Photoshop and GIMP can significantly reduce the loading time of an image, without noticably compromising quality. And for images that are already in your Media Library, I like plugins like Smush.it, which let you batch-process the job of optimizing images throughout your whole WordPress site.


Helpful Pin of the Week

PinterestI focused on building my Work Tools Board this week, and found some interesting articles on content marketing, crowdfunding and, my favorite: “What goes into a Media Kit?”.

Marketing in general, and PR activities in particular, can be daunting for entrepreneurs: you envision a steep learning curve and major time suck to get yourself and your product out there. But as Maya Elious capably explains, an effective Media Kit can be created using a series of simple steps. Value add!


Is it a good idea to rely on a writing group to critique your work?

Writers' groupApparently not, as Michael Neff opines in this eye-opening piece at The Writer’s Edge. He goes on to explore some other clichés and caveats about the exploitation of authors and the pitfalls of listening to amateur advice. Novelists may find a group helpful if they abide by a set of rules and judge others’ work according to a limited set of criteria. Other types of writers, not so much. While touting the value of professional reviewers like himself, Neff makes some thought-provoking points.


Snow-mad Bostonians

photo courtesy of indierockranger

photo courtesy of indierockranger

As most of the world knows, Boston and New England have been slogging through the coldest, snowiest winter in living memory. Cabin-feverish Bostonians have had to come up with inventive ways of dealing with the catastrophe: drones over Harvard, pairing snowglobe photos with the prose and poetry of Samuel Beckett…and becoming YouTube stars with their penchant for jumping out of windows in their skivvies. Marty Walsh, Boston’s new Nanny Mayor, does have a point when he admonishes the pranksters about the (obvious) inherent dangers of snowbank diving from third-floor verandas. Verandas are decks, in case you didn’t grow up around here.